9.26.2005

Lady Liberty Meets BollywoodOnlookers said Monday that Bollywood movie stars Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee were on hand filming in Jersey City. Although no one claimed to have seen the stars up-close, that didn't dampen their spirits as they waited alongside the balmy sea.Lunch? LATER!All these people snuck out of work to catch a glimpse of the Bollywood stars working on the innaccessible pier.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- The midday lunch crowd at Exchange Place on the Hudson River clammored for a glimpse of Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee - movie stars from India.

Alas the water, the wind and the weather worked agains fans who nonetheless had to return to work in nearby office buildings.

In the distance beyond the film crew on the battered J. OWEN GUNDY PARK, Lady Liberty kept watch across New York Harbor.

One onlooker graciously wrote down the stars names and suggested we 'GOOGLE' it.

In five years of using public transportation to get from northeastern Essex County to the Hudson River at Jersey City, I've seen a few things that stand out ...

Jackson Wanna Be . In the mornings on the PATH from Newark to Exchange Place, there was this old black man with head phones singing to the Michael Jackson song "Remember." This guy must have thought he was in the chorus - because he would be bopping along silently and then shout out "REMEMBER!" Then be quiet again. He kept singing his part when it came around again on the CD. And the funny thing about it was that each time he sang out, everybody around him was surprised. I haven't seen this guy in a while.

Lady Who Fell In Puke . One night going home on the PATH, a woman came in from the station and slipped like a Keystone Kop onto the floor on some vomit left by a previous passenger. The woman laid there, on the floor, in the slop, not moving. Finally someone pushed the CALL button. The train pulled out of the station anyway. By the time we got to Journal Square the conductor showed up and they helped the lady off. They asked for a witness to tell them what happened. The witness stayed at the station to give a report. The conductor asked which CALL button was used so he could de-activate it. We headed home.

Footloose Lady . One morning boarding the PATH in Newark, the train was about to leave when a woman came dashing to the car. She fell and it turned out her foot was caught in the gap between the car and the station railing. When the cops came we all had to get off the train. The woman laid there on the ground. Embarrassed, I'm sure, with her foot caught there. I thought we should have all gotten on the train and leaned the other way and that would have opened the gap and she could have pulled her foot loose. But nobody asked me. We all just stood around and watched. When they finally got the woman's foot free, they found a chair for her to sit in. Before we could board the train, someone from PATH came and measured the gap between the car and the railing. We finally got on the car and headed to work. No one ever heard anything about the woman or her foot.

Mr. Tourette's . A few times I found myself on the same car as an older man who seemed to be talking on the phone. With earpieces these days, you never know whether or not someone is talking to himself or has a person at the end of the line. Well this guy is talking in a normal voice, and not too long, and to the annoyance of most of us around him, he begins to talk in vulgarities. His talk would make a drill instructor blush. And you can see the people around him don't know what to make of him. Is he on the phone to a 900-number or what? So he goes on for a while and nobody says anything to him. But you could see people are embarrassed by his talk. They try to move away from him. I haven't seen him in a while, but I could simply be on a later PATH car than he rides regularly.

The two-hour round trip each day from northeastern Essex County to the Hudson River at Jersey City using ...

At work there's a place where unwanted magazines go to find a second life.

That's where I found the premiere issue of Chicken Soup for the Soul Magazine.

It was the one with a photo of the young Elvis on the cover, and lots of pink type and a pink border.

I guess they are trying to attract people who like hot pink.

One of the ads that caught my eye said

"DISCOVER WHY COLOR IS OUR FIRST NAME"

Over a gorgeous valley with purple mountains majesty in the distance.

When I told a friend about this, he told me that "Colo" is the location and "rado" means red, but only half the state is red and the other half if blue. He should know, he was there, driving around this summer with his daughter.

Maybe Dennis meant instead of a half-blue state that it was purple. Unless he was kidding and I - 'New Jersey's Garrison Keilor - or something like that' - didn't get the joke?

In the magazine there was a story about a place in California where people deposit their chewed chewing gum. They've been leaving chewing gum there since 1960, the magazine said.

Another ad that caught my eye and made me stop was for Fufu Berry soda by Jones Soda Co.

On the 12-oz. bottle label covering the pink red FUFU BERRY is a banner that says Elvis is Alive.

The GREEN APPLE SODA bottle has a pick up truck with those 10-foot tires on it.

And the other soda in the ad, BLUE BUBBLE GUM SODA - which is pale blue, says on its label "also COIN operated"

So, judging by the ad, it must be good soda. No?

I'll tell you about one more ad, then you'll have to decide whether you're interested in what the rest of the magazine might hold.

It's the ad for Connecticut that caught my eye in the early flip through of the new mag. Their headline says, "The real beauty is, it's only an hour away."

But, I wondered, how do they know that? Is this a northeast regional magazine? Or is there a secret sloop that sends you to tony Greenwich or bustling Bridgeport, Conn?

PS - there's a story about the guy who invented the Pet Rock, and some photos of Elvis and his mother, Elvis asleep, Elvis in the pool, and a bit about the Mustard Museum in Wisconsin.

9.22.2005

Believe it or not, public transportation has the reputation of a Death Wish movie. As soon as you and your family gets on the subway, the bad guys get on behind you and harass your wife and kids until Charles Bronson comes along and gives them what for.

For the longest time I rode the bus, subway and train with my goods held tightly always ready for the knock-down drag-out whup-@ss that would ensue if someone tries to touch my package.

One New Year's Eve I worked a half-day and headed away from the big city when most folks were heading in for the fun.

When I set myself to sit down on the lightrail there was a thick wallet filled with cash and credit cards and pictures of black people and a Maryland driver's license.

I tried to turn in the wallet to the guards who check that your ticket is valid.

They told me to turn it in to the driver. When we got to the last stop, I tapped on the door and handed it to him.

A few weeks, or months, later, I saw the driver again and asked him if he remembered what happened to the wallet.

He said that when he called it in from our end of the station, there was a guy at Penn Station with his fingers crossed.

My mother told me when I was a little kid that if I wanted the bus to show up, all I had to do was light a cigarette. She said that as soon as you lit a cigarette the bus would show up and you'd have to put it out.

She never smoked, so I guess this was an old wives' tale she once witnessed.

We've seen the queue for the bus and those smokers choking down the last puffs before the bus is going to pull away without them.

Sometimes they take the drag, drop the cigarette and exhale, then get on the bus.

It sucks when they take the drag, drop the cigarette, board the bus and then exhale.

Ever been on the light rail when the public address system is one stop off?

It drives the tourists nuts!

Have you ever ridden into the old Heller Parkway subway station and looked into the park? If you did you'd see piles of garbage in the fence behind the maintenance buildings.

Hey, we're not talking Burger King wrappers, we're talking big heavy pieces of crap that should have been cleaned up a long, long time ago.

Isn't it weird that the place called the maintenance yard is such a pig sty. Some day maybe they'll clean it up ... it's been there for years and I would practically stake my pension that the trash will be there when I'm dead and gone.

With special dispensation in my pocket, I found myself on the PATH car heading from Exchange Place to Newark, full of people, okay, crowded, but moving along. It's only a 15-minute ride, so we'll play Charlie the Tuna for a few minutes.

How bad could it be?

At Journal Square we picked up more people than we dropped off and the place was so crowded we bled inside each other's wounds, so to speak.

That's when I noticed the youngish blond haired guy reading the newspaper. He was sitting in the last seat of the row near the door.

Next to him, standing like two deer in the headlights were two old people. They had to be in their 70s, or older.

The young guy read his paper. Then finished it and tucked it under his leg on the seat. He dug deep into his parachute pockets and began fiddling with ear phones and an electronic device the size of a cigarette lighter.

He seemed oblivious to the old people clinging to the safety bars at his right. He didn't see the wrinkled elbows just inches from his nose.

I've always felt that you are where you are because, because that's where you're supposed to be.

Somewhere past the place where the overseas containers are loaded on the rail frames and our next stop in Harrison, the train stopped.

I wondered should I ask the guy to let the old folks sit? Or should I mind my own business.

Perhaps I could ask to borrow his paper, and if it was in English, then ask him to help me read the sign he was sitting against... WON'T YOU PLEASE GIVE THIS SEAT TO THE ELDERLY OR DISABLED

The rules of the road seem to ignore what your mother might have told you about being a good boy.

Here, if you don't see someone in need, they don't exist.

It wouldn't surprise me if the blond guy drives his car the same way.

After we stood there a few minutes, stopped in the prairie, waiting without a word from the famous PATH speaker system, I realized this was all my fault.

We were stuck here in the middle of nowhere, and going nowhere fast all because of me. I was heading away from Ninevah, I was like Jonah trying to ignore my duty. Soon they'd cast lots and I'd be groveling in the gravel.

Without anybody saying anything, to me or to the blonde guy, I knew we'd be sitting here in the nether land until I dug into my pack, pulled out a pen and paper and told you what I see from where I stand.

Granny's elbow nearly took his eye out. But the blond guy sitting in the last row, he never noticed.

What would you do? You're on a crowded PATH car and it's stopped for no reason in the middle of nowhere. You don't know whether you'll be here another minute, five minutes, ten minutes, or over night?

Out the window we could see the billboard advertising a TV show: Criminal Minds.

Maybe we should wait until Granny passes out on the floor. Then we could step over her on our way out.

Would you get invovled?

Would you ignore it?

I looked at the blond guy's shirt and tried to read his company logo. Maybe it said D Drive?

Here in car 121 near the end of the PATH train we couldn't hear the conductor or read the script on the blond guy's shirt.

Staring real hard at the embroidery on the shirt of the blond guy sitting in the end seat of the crowded PATH car stopped in the middle of the meadowlands for no apparent reason, it seemed to read C Drive Technologies. We Make It Happen and on the sleeve it read HP Internet Stew, or something.

It was 625 and we had been on this car about a half hour. We were stopped about 10 minutes or so, so far. And we weren't moving.

Looking out the window, it didn't look like we were going anywhere. We had about a half dozen tracks on each side of the rails where we waited. It would take TV's McGyver to get us out of this one.

Gram has golf clubs embroidered on her horizontally striped blouse. The three and five clubs have numbers on them. Pop has flowers on his shirt like he was from Florida or Hawaii Five-Oh.

They both wore K-Mart blue jeans. And when they spoke to each other it was with a Southern accent.

Gram looked like Central Casting sent down an actress to play a sweet grandma who would treat the kids to milk and fresh baked cookies. Even though she looked like she was tiring, her old blue eyes sparkled as she stood next to Pop.

Pop leaned against the advertisement between the last seat and the door. He held onto the rail and Gram. With a rugged tan and his yellow-grey hair slicked back, he looked like Nick Nolte at 80.

The rail cars lurched forward like a hiccup on New Year's Day.

We strained to hear anything from the conductor a dozen cars away and then the car stopped again.

Answer: (You're going to hate yourself if you said three days!) Fact is, Noah wasn't in the belly of the whale. It was Jonah that ended up with the sushi in the belly of the great fish.

A long time ago God said to Jonah, 'Jonah, I want you to go to Ninevah and tell them to repent or I'll bring down a giant whupping on their @ss.'

So Jonah said to God, 'Sure, God, I'm pretty busy but I'll try to work it into my schedule.'

Then Jonah got on a boat that was sailing in the opposite direction from Ninevah, saying to himself, why does God always pick me to do his preaching, I'm not going to Ninevah, it smells and the people talk funny.

But while Jonah was on the ship, a great storm came along and if not for the courage of the tiny crew the Minnow 1BC would be lost.

The Skipper said to his first mate, Gilley, what did we do to God that he sent this storm to wreck havoc on our tiny ship?

Gilley said, maybe it has something to do with our party with Ginger and MaryAnn last night?

But the Skipper was a rightious man and said to Gilley, 'Someone on this ship has angered the Lord. We must draw straws to see who it was.'

So the Skipper and Gilley hauled on board the passenger who had been cowering from the storm and they took straws and shortened one and then each drew a lot.

A little lot is what Jonah drew. That's when he realized the ship was in the middle of the storm because he went away from Ninevah. That city was having a a whupping good time and didn't know it was waiting for Jonah to come along and tell it now is the time to repent.

So the Skipper and Gilligan threw the millionaire Jonah overboard and in no time at all the sea calmed and they could finish their three hour tour.

Jonah, meanwhile tried to remember how to swim, or learn how to drown. But God had other plans. A great fish swallowed up Jonah but couldn't swallow the seaman, so after three days of Rolaids, Tums and Milanta, the great fish spit out Jonah on the shore of the city of Ninevah.

Smelling of rotten fish, Jonah immediately went to the king of the city and told him the story of what the Lord told him and that the people of Ninevah should repent and wear sack cloth (burlap bags from the feedstore) and ashes (the residue of burned things) so that God would spare the great city from a big old @ss whupping.

So the king decreed that Jonah's words be heeded and the city was saved.

And Jonah said to himself, from now on I'm going to do what God tells me to do the first time he tells me.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2005 - The Trump Organization CEO Donald J. Trump, Metro Homes Founder Dean Geibel and his partner Paul Fried today announced construction will begin on Trump Plaza: Jersey City, a $415 million condominium project that will include the two tallest residential towers in the state of New Jersey.

Construction will begin this year with occupancy beginning in November 2007, Trump and Geibel said.

Trump Plaza, at Washington and Bay Streets, will include a 531,500 square-foot tower, topping out at 55 stories, with 445 condominium homes, and a 481,283 square-foot tower, reaching 50 stories, with 417 condominium homes.

Each unit has a 20-year property tax abatement. The towers will rise from a 328,658 square-foot, seven-story base, housing a garage with 696 parking spaces and 23,000 square feet of prime retail space.

The base will accommodate a business center, home theater screening room, a private 8,000 square foot fitness center, a rooftop plaza with an outdoor heated swimming pool, a private landscaped yard, children's play area and enclosed basketball court.

... The two-acre parcel originally was acquired by Panepinto Properties, a Jersey City based real estate development company.

Panepinto Properties, along with The Applied Companies of Hoboken, initiated the two-tower concept and design of the project.

Panepinto Properties and The Applied Companies remain as partners in the development.

Preconstruction Little David building is surrounded by large dark building which will be replaced by the JC Trump Tower at Bay and Washington streets. At right, in front of crane, is former artists colony at First Street.

Here I am, a mild mannered reporter for an obscure web log named after a TV character half the people reading blogs never heard of since the show aired about 40 years ago. A week like this one makes you wish you had a larger audience, no?Three times in one September week, the 6:38 NJ Transit 74 Paterson bus pulled out on me after I'd exited the Newark City Subway and crossed the platform.

That's 3 of 5 times in one week the driver of the 6:38 bus took off when I was close enough to the door to spit on him … If I had any spit left.

The first time I was within spitting distance of the bus door when it closed and pulled away.

The second time I had crossed the station and was within ten feet when he closed the door and pulled away.

And the third time I saw the empty bus pull up as I was crossing the platform, the doors opened and no one got on or off. As I got closer, the doors closed and the driver pulled off.

This occurrence seems to have stepped up in the past few weeks. I noticed three specific times in one week, but I began to wonder how many other times, and believe me, there were other times this happened.You can't complain to the station manager - there's only a guy in the booth between the light rail ramps and he says he has nothing to do with the buses. He said you have to go to Grove Street to find a supervisor.

While Tom Cruise's Maverick character had a better shot at TOP GUN than I'll have of being a roving reporter for a large national newspaper based near Wall Street, I can have my say right here in this obscure little blog.

9.19.2005

"... The nominees have been selected. There is a panel of judges independent of the "administrative committee" that oversees the event itself. Public announcement will be timed for the Thursday Sept. 22nd editions of The Nutley Sun and the Nutley Journal...."

- NJHometown News

Being nominated doesn't mean you win anything. Personally, I was rejected from the Wall of Fame from my high school alma mater, but I can see the humor in it and use it as research for something I'll some day write ... such as my Junior High School Memories:

... has embarked on a return to his lighter-side writing in a new project of remembrance essays, beginning with junior high school.Last Lap to Fiftyis expected to be a four-volume series. (This was namedLast Lap to Fortyand may well end up beingLast Lap to Sixty.) ...

9.18.2005

The 12-mile trip from northeastern Essex County to the Hudson River at Jersey City is about 40 minutes by car.

That's about 20 minutes to Jersey City and at least another 20 minutes to cross the four miles of Jersey City.

Of course, that's on a good day, with no traffic tie ups or bad weather, or such. (Now, there's a good laugh! HAH!)

Parking, in September 1999, was about $135 a month and jumped to well over $225 a month in June 2000, when Hyatt hotel construction began on the pier that until then had provided parking for several hundred cars. Nowadays, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

To make a long story short. I don't make that drive anymore.

In July 2000, I began using mass transportation to get to work - for the first time in my life. It's less than $135 a month with passes and such.

Having grown up in urban-suburban northern New Jersey, taking a bus or train to work was always something other people did.

Besides, to get from northeastern Essex County to Englewood, or East Brunswick, or Parsippany, or Mahwah, or Moonachie, or Pompton Plains you had to take a bus into Port Authority in Manhattan and then take a bus out to your destination.

Down three flights of stairs to the NCS Light Rail. A car is pulling in. I grab a seat and then see him.

“Brudders and sisters,” the Preacher Man says, “I am here to tell you the news about heaven …”

He always waits until the car pulls out of the station before he begins.

“I used to smoke, cheat, steal … Jesus gave me a new …”

You figure it isn’t easy to preach the word to these bones, these bones that ride these rails. The ones who hear him won’t give him the time of day, so to speak. The heavenly choir riding that peace train home is tuning out the song.

“Jesus came into this world to seek and to save that which was lost …”

On my fractured CD player, Marty Robbins sings in my ear. Yes. El Paso. One of the songs I can’t hear is about the bad cowboy saved while rustling cattle. In the song lightning stampedes the herd and a strike splits a tree into the shape of a cross and the bad cowboy sees it and is saved from his evil ways.

Kind of reminds me of the Sgt. York movie when lightning shatters the rifle Alvin is carrying.

Norfolk Street and the Preacher Man’s still going. I've been running in to him for about four years. A lot of good it did me, eh?

The walking dead are trying to tune him out. In desperation to get his baritone droning out of their heads they read the ads posted overhead. It doesn’t matter that they are written in Spanish "Su Dinero Cuando Usted Lo Necesita" – make funny sentences by mixing up the meanings of the foreign words.

This must be the 20th time “from out of nowhere Felina has found me.”

You remember, of course, that I got the CD player to play – more or less – in one ear, depending on a jostle here and there.

BUT it’s only playing ONE SONG over and over & I can’t reach down to get it out of my pocket to re-set it.

Here goes the “handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor.”

My fingers have given up & I’m writing in a fist. You could wonder – but my hand is asleep when I need it most.

Preacher Man got off at Bloomfield Avenue. I hear a lot of buses pass that way.

This September night looks like Ophelia headed our way and the sky is dark and menacing.

Finally the bus pulls up. It’s been here but only now put its lights on so we’d know if it’s the one we’re waiting for. The other busses sit with their lights out, the drivers on break. I suppose the riders need a union too?

There’s a good crowd but plenty of seats. I sit sideways in the old people seats behind the driver.

He weaves the giant bus off 5th Street through cars parked on both sides on Anthony Street to the light at Sixth Street.

Off to the left, you can’t see it now because it’s long gone, but once, before these senior skyscrapers came along, right over there, next to where the gas station is, that’s where the pony rides were located when I was a kid.

Did I tell you I was the fastest draw in the wild west city of Belleville, N.J., in 1961? That’s when Marty Robbins wrote and released El Paso. Oh. I did tell you. Wait until you get old and start to repeat yourself!

At the stop across the street from Clara Maass Medical Center, on gets Bam-Bam, a regular who hops this bus to Centre Street in Nutley to catch the 13 to Belleville which is where we are now. It’s a perfect example of “you can’t get there from here.”

The metal tip of Bam-Bam’s cane is bursting through the plastic cap. I don’t know his name, but when he talks to the bus driver, he ends his sentences with Bam-Bam. There are a lot of regulars on this bus, and except for Jimmy the magician, I don’t know their names, and that includes the few I have conversations with.

Bam-Bam looks like the actors Herb Edelman and Herschel Bernardi. He talks loud and clear and doesn’t care who hears what he has to say.

I got up from the senior seat for him and took a seat further back as Bam-Bam climbed aboard. Ahead of him a guy who seemed okay gets on and takes the seat I left.

Someone else got up from the opposite senior sideways seats and Bam-Bam plopped down, looping his cane in the hand-hold bar.

Bam-Bam thanked the guy who got up. I nodded as if to say ‘don’t mention it.’ But I don’t think he ever saw me either get up to give him my seat or nod back to say not to mention it.

My first wife calls that putting bricks in your house in heaven. All I did was give the guy a seat.

The 6:53 No. 74 Bus to Paterson is flying me home in the early dark of the night. I’m wondering if I’ll beat the rain. I know my umbrella will stay dry – it’s hanging on a doorknob in the basement.

In the silhouette of the night the few remaining buildings are backlit by the fading light as they wonder will they too be part of the Essex Park housing development or turned into rubble before the leaves change colors.

I turn off El Paso and pack up the Walkman.

Against the odds I sat safe and dry in my little red wagon. Before I could pull away from the curb the sky opened up. Driving home was not unlike a long ride through a car wash tunnel.

Tapping her well-manicured fingernails on her expensive black skirt, the woman in the powder blue blouse and vest held her other hand back and the source of the music only she could hear and the wires that delivered it to her ears were invisible.

Every full PATH car has at least one beautiful woman on it. She's usually surrounded by so many sleepy people - men and women, night and day - that her countenance is unnoticed. But sometimes you can spot her.

This morning, this woman stood in full view & I could see had no wrinkles in her clothes or skin. A brief glance revealed a perfect young face framed in perfect brown hair.

The young man standing to my right was staring at and through her. He was amazed at his lot in life this morning on the Newark PATH to Jersey City and beyond.

She, meanwhile had perfected the invisible stare that all beautiful young women must master (or be overcome by their own beauty) and she tapped her fingers against her rich black skirt listening to music that must have made her happy way down yonder in her soul.

I fumbled with my free paper, squished my AM New York into my backpack and retrieved the tattered and battered old Walkman.

I tried to juggle and jiggle the antique CD player and the mismatched earphones from some long ago trashed player.

Spinning around there the Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs wailed and gurgled in one ear or the other then blasted in both ears before cutting out all together.

With each bump in the rickety PATH rail the music popped, chopped and crackled in my head.

Stereo sound strained out of my earpieces if I tilted my head & looked off into the distance like someone sitting for a senior high school yearbook picture.

The noises I heard were not comforting the savage breast, but most irritating.

It took me back to long ago when vinyl record albums skipped - instant headache - & the only earphones you could get were huge and made you look like a pilot on Twelve O'Clock High.

Twitching with the odd sounds in my head - a woman off to our side held a nonstop chat at the door facing off into the spacious mews oblivious of all around her cringing on each word like fingernails dragged across a blackboard.

The beautiful young woman before me traveled through the meadows with all of us but you could see she was alone somewhere swell as the music played through her head.

A blast in my head said, "I caught a good one it looked like it could run ..."

And I saw before me a young woman whose beauty could start a war, who could make a bishop punch his fist through a stained glass window.

Her blue shoes seemed like sneakers but anyone who spent what she did on the rest of her fine clothes would never wear SNEAKERS you know.

Anyway her shoes had a blue cloth cover and no backs so they looked like a hybrid sandal tennis shoe when I knew I’d seen something like that on the incredible shoe show on late night TV when they sold Birkenstock shoes as if they were the latest thing.

Those shoes were around 30 years ago. I think I read about them in a novel called Housewife that was written back in the 70s. It’s about a woman who is less than satisfied with her weight and her husband. But when I read it a while back, I saw that it mentioned Birkenstocks and I thought that everything old is new again.

"Aloha, pretty girl," I wanted to say, “do you ever weary of the weight of your beauty?” But, alas, Exchange Place flashed in the dirty windows. Every man & woman for himself as we melded towards the escalator.

Up she walked ahead. She was much shorter now that I was standing too.

A skinny man with lint on his pants' butt walked ahead and between us as we scaled the moving stairs.

At the top I went north and she went south to the place where forgotten names, memories and faces go.

9.12.2005

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Music & Lyrics by Stephen SondheimBook by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart Directed by Alex Oleksij

If you are in the area of Nutley, N.J., and in need of many a good burst-out-loud, hold-on-to-your-seat laugh, then try to get tickets to the season opener at the Nutley Little Theatre. You've only got two more weekends to catch it, but, you'll kick yourself if you miss it.

We saw it Saturday night and were utterly delighted with the cast and high-energy performances.

9.11.2005

Across the river: the Manhattan skyline. Glimpse this way from the World Trade Center, you'll see us, ants scurrying at the base of the ever-changing Jersey City skyline (there really IS one!) Here is a nearly constant state of change as new buildings edge out the view of the old. Even the abandoned piers are coming back to life. You'll see. from: Along the Hudson River

Sit here and watch the light rail passSee the stairs we rushed downOn 9-11 when Sharon kickedLoose the door and the alarmThat was real sounding& the first floorWhere we got to that landingWhen I turned Sharon awayFrom re-entering the buildingAround we went & came outTo the fresh air of theSeptember morningfrom: City Beans

Can I leap now, Al?Why haven't I leaped?Isn't my work done?What does Ziggy say?Al? Al? Can you hear me, Al?Why haven't I leaped?Didn't I do what Ziggysays I should do, Al?

I came, I recorded the before.Now it's all different.Haven't I finished my work here?Seeing how it has changedand how life goes on,that doesn't always sit so well.When will I ever returnto the me that was before? Al, can you tell me?

I had driven by this memorial at a high-traffic intersection several times and noticed the flags had fallen. Finally, on one pass, I parked and walked back. It only took a moment to fix the flags. Just goes to show you can't wait for someone else to do something that needs to be done.

9.09.2005

If you're familiar with the old Danny Thomas show, you'll remember that Hans Conried played his uncle Tonoose. Somewhere in the 1960's my pals started calling me Uncle Tonoose and then Tonoose, and well, if you were one of the half-dozen or so of them, you would know why Stinky was called Stinky and Hoss Hoss, and so on down the line.

Ethnic Slurs''Uncle Tonoose'' : (Arab-Americans) a "sellout" (derived from "Uncle Tom" and from the name of a stereotypical character on a 1950s television show.)

Languages & Phrases - ForeignHashush-al-Kabaar - Lebanese phrase meaning "The Man Who Made a Monkey Out of a Camel" on the sitcom MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY/CBS/1953-64. "Hashush-al-Kabaar" was the nickname of Uncle Tonoose (Hans Conried), the Lebanese relative (head of the family) of nightclub entertainer Danny Williams (Danny Thomas). Tonoose (who loved goat cheese and grape leaves) claimed his family descended from King Achmed the Unwashed.

9.07.2005

"explore your inner Kerouac".

Can you imagine what Jack would say about being part of a state's tourism advertising campaign?

After all these years, 55 years ago there was Town And The City, then in '57 On The Road, and before you knew it he was gone. And forty years later you're reading a blog about him. Don't that beat all?

A long time ago, Allen Ginsberg & his dad, Louis, did a joint reading at Rutgers in Newark.

Allen recited a poem about that mentioned the Gorny & Gorny Mortuary, and the train line going through Belleville, my home town. He played something like an accordian or a squeeze box, and before you knew it, we were chanting along.

I don't think I ever heard a poem before that mentioned my home town - at least not one written by world-famous poet, nor a poem that mentioned things I had seen on my own.

Allen told a story about being mugged for his wallet. So they got his wallet and left him his worthless briefcase filled with $20,000 of manuscripts.

Louis was known for his newspaper filler called O-Pun Mind that used verse and puns. They ran in the Star Ledger on the editorial or op-ed page.

Anyway, to make a long story short, at the reception afterward, I asked Allen for advice. He said, "Keep breathing."

Wow. I bet even (my future music critic partner) John Narucki was impressed, but I never thought to ask him.

Then Allen said he wanted to spend some time with his father who, back in the 1970s, was already an old man.

Maybe I should have asked Allen about Kerouac and those old days?

The Independent Press of Bloomfield ran the story I wrote about the reading: Anthony Hears The Ginsbergs. I guess you can find it in the library. I have a copy in my attic, with my copy of Kaddish, and my copies of The Town & The City, On The Road, Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Pip.

Up in the boxes and the dust are a lot of paperbacks I bought way back in the day at the Paperback Book Store on Bloomfield Avenue in Bloomfield Center, Bloomfield, N.J.

Who knows, I might even find the rejection letter I got from City Lights Books when they said they didn't want my poetry. I bet that would look good in a frame, or on my web site.
Some day, maybe it'll turn up in a tourism ad for some state that rhymes with New Jersey?
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